


I do the best with what I have (and what I have is nothing)

by neverending_shenanigans



Series: Dragon Age Prompt Exchange Fills [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied Lavellan/Solas (Dragon Age), It's Solas' fault, Loss, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, Spoilers, The Author Regrets Everything, inaccurate archery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 22:16:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20015653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverending_shenanigans/pseuds/neverending_shenanigans
Summary: Lessons in pain are learned the hard way, and Ellana Lavellan has to deal with the worst kind of pain: Loss.





	I do the best with what I have (and what I have is nothing)

_I do the best with what I have (and what I have is nothing)_

Ellana traces her fingers briefly over the lemon tree wood of the bow, as she adjusts the position of the recruit. “ _Higher_ ,” she says calmly. Personally, she had never been fond of this type of wood for bows, but they had an abundance of it here, thanks to the generosity of some Antivan Merchant. “ _Your first lesson is this: Patience and flexibility. Learn to keep your arms steady_ ,” she says to them. Patience and flexibility, Haren had always said, were the most priced virtue of the archer.

Patience had been the key of her first lesson, when she had made her first bow, as the Dalish of their Clan always did when they reached their tenth year. No matter if you were cut out for archery or not. She continues through the group of recruits, correcting more of their posture and their grips on their bows. Whenever her fingers touch their different kinds of bows they seemed to tingle with the memory of the feeling of the juniper wood of her own first bow.

She had spent a whole day looking for the right kind of wood. Free of knots and twists, a branch that was thick at its center. These recruits don't have to do any of this, but that didn’t mean the lessons weren’t important. “ _Make yourself free of your own knots in your stomach and twists in your thoughts when you pick up the bow. Become centered_.” The hypocrisy of her saying this even as her own inside was cramping together was something she had to push aside for the moment.

A couple of the recruits were young elves from the alienages that had flocked to them. Many more were human. So many unmarked faces, not just from age. She remembered the ten elves of her own age group in their Clan. All yet unmarked, not yet grown. Her face was marked with a few scars, but she felt the marks that were missing and all the more naked in this sea of naked faces. It hurt as much as looking in a mirror, these days.

“ _Don’t be stiff in your posture. You have to find your natural position_ ,” she places a palm between the shoulder blades of some of the recruits, reminding them to breathe. “Y _our imperfections will affect your arrow’s flight. There is no lying to a bow._ ” She remembers her Haren’s lesson, finding the curve in the wood as she had constructed the bow. If you didn’t spend the time to determine the natural growth of the wood you used, your bow was likely to splinter in the process. Just like each person was unique, each piece of wood was different. You had to respect that. And she had to remember that now, with the recruits.

She leaves them to practice this, and knows that many of them are disappointed. For the first weeks, they don’t even shoot an arrow, they just learn to perfect their grip and find their stance. She tries to make them appreciate the bow, but how could they? They hadn’t shaped it with their own hands. Had not learned to test each curve and diameter, always from the belly to the tips. None of them had ruined the wood and had to starting over, as so many of her Clan had. The slightest damage to its structure could cause a bow to break. The irony of that thought alone made her laugh bitterly to herself.

In their second week, she does make them take a knife to their bows. Maybe it is petulance on her part, but she feels that they need this. They do exchange glances, but she ignores them, and they chose to indulge the Inquisitor, apparently. Before they get to shoot their first arrow, they have to pick a god or something to bless their bow and guide their arrow. Something that reminds them for what or whom they pick this weapon up for. She remembers her own carvings of Mythal’s symbols that had once marked her own face, too, with a tightness in her own stomach, but pushes these thoughts aside. She makes them think about it, sleep on it.

There are several different symbols, and a few names that show up on their bows in their next lesson. Ellana is pleased with the result, especially when she sees them handling their bows now. To them it had been just a weapon, not an extension of their arm, their souls, their selves. That much was beginning to change. And now that they had a mental aim, she also teaches them how to aim their bows properly.

And then the real training begins. Making a bow takes weeks and skill, and so should it should be for their training. The bow had to be allowed to stand the heat of fire, imperfections had to be smoothed out. So Ellana applies this here, and she is harsh with them. They are beginning to be tense around her, as tightly wound as their bows. Her training is rigorous, but fruitful. Slowly, the recruits begin to hit their targets more effectively.

Of course, there are also accidents. Some sustain injuries from the shaft to their wrist and hands. She shows them the other side of her craft, too. How to treat arrow wounds, and what an arrow can do to a person. And it is then that it becomes … too much. She begins to feel that this is the limit for her.

Sera shows up as if on cue – and who says it isn’t exactly that? – and begins to chase around the recruits with her bows and arrows over the roofs and the battlements of skyhold. Ellana watches from her own balcony and the rooftops. Varric is roped into helping by Cassandra for lessons in how to aim and shoot while staying in cover. He almost even volunteers when he teaches them how to put poison on an arrow without poisoning yourself. Skinner and even Dalish help out and set up a small tournament for a barrel of ale. Once, Leliana even takes over for a couple of lessons how to shoot astride a steed of any kind, and she is the only one the recruits seem to fear more than her.

Ellana is stuck on her own lesson, it seems. She is licking her wounds, but there are wounds she can't seem to heal.

 _Patience. Flexibility. Become centred. Work with what you have_.

But she finds she can’t.

The night that their training ends, she feels the emptiness and the disappointment. It's all wrong. She loses her balance as turns away from the sight, and tears down the curtain in her fall. For a moment, she stays on the floor, but then she pulls herself up on the desk - and swipes everything down. She trashes her own place and is crying soundlessly at the agony festering in her. Rot has settled in her core, like an angry festering arrow wound. She had felt it watching the recruits: Jealousy. Anger. Bitterness. Resentment. Decay that has infected not just her body, but her mind and heart. She couldn’t let it continue.

On an impulse, with a sob that shakes her whole body, she climbs her bed and tears own juniper wood bow down from it's position. In a whirl she throws it into the fire. She stands still for a bare second. And then she sinks to her knees and then to the floor in a pile of tears, and for the moment she thinks she can feel the searing fire lick on her very skin. Her quiet sobs turn into cries of pain. Nothing more than ash is left behind after a few hours, and she is a pile of nothing in front of the fire place, soot and trails of tears on her face, and red, angry marks where she had clawed her face, throat and torso.

Now her breathing is slowed, but still heavy. She used to always find solace in this. In the lessons she had been taught, that had shaped and formed her. But they had been ripped from her, and their absence is burning into the very core of her soul, like the phantom pain of the limb she has lost. She had thought that passing it on would lessen the pain. Instead it had reminded her of all that wasn't there anymore and ripped her wound far open and she splintered into thousand tiny pieces.

Without her bow, there is nothing left behind of who she once was. She has no Clan anymore, and he had torn apart the Gods she had once believed in. Her face is now as naked and bare as she felt. And now there is nothing left of hunter either. And just like she couldn’t regrow her arm, there was no regaining any of that.

Ellana closes her eyes, and breathes in the smell of ash and burned wood. She is nothing, so that is where she has to start a new. She couldn’t let the nothing frighten her. So she focuses on breathing. Slowly. As long as she was still breathing, still bleeding, still feeling pain, she was still alive. A little more than nothing. She had to work with that.

Come morning she will leave behind the ashes of her past and find a new way for this new person she has to be. She is a new piece of wood. She can never be a bow again, but each piece of wood is unique. She would find new purpose for these new knots and twists and scars in her; she would carve around the bleeding, breathing pain.

She would make herself anew.

**Author's Note:**

> Original Prompt over at the DApromptexchange on tumblr:
> 
> An rogue lavellan inquisitor has to deal with the loss of their arm, and the subsequent loss of one of the few connections to their clan they had left: their ability to use a bow.
> 
> I swear I don’t intentionally seek out the angsty prompts. Also disclaimer: I was into archery when I was ten. For exactly four weeks during a summer camp thing. I did ten minutes of research, but didn’t have time for more. Not trying to shit on anyone, and feel free to throw stones at me for the inaccuracy. Archery is cool and I respectfully know nothing of it.
> 
> Also, as always, I blame Solas for this. You should, too.


End file.
